Greek authors, genres, rhetoric and interpretation
Identify genre without replacing close reading
Greek epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, historiography, oratory and philosophical writing organize experience differently. The Iliad centres on Achilles' anger within an episode of the Trojan War; it is not a complete narrative of every event from the war's beginning to its conclusion. The Odyssey develops Odysseus' return and the crisis of his household. Treat narrator, character and represented divine perspective as distinct rather than converting every speech into the poet's direct personal view.
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are major tragedians, while Aristophanes is associated with Old Comedy and Menander with New Comedy. A chorus, dialogue or mythic character must be interpreted within the actual work. Shared myth does not mean that all surviving versions give a character the same motives or end in the same way.
Prose and argument
Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon are associated with historiography, but their methods and narrative situations differ. A speech inside a historical work requires attention to how the historian presents it. Orators such as Lysias and Demosthenes shape arguments for particular audiences and occasions. Distinguish judicial, deliberative and display contexts rather than assuming that every political-sounding passage belongs to one category.
Plato's corpus includes philosophical dialogues and a literary presentation of Socrates' defence in the Apology. A dialogue speaker's claim is not automatically a settled doctrine endorsed without qualification by Plato. Compare questions, refutations, examples and dramatic setting before summarising an argument. Socrates himself is not the author of Plato's written dialogues.
Form and evidence
For a rhetorical figure, quote the relevant Greek and describe the arrangement: anaphora repeats an opening element, chiasmus reverses a pattern and antithesis contrasts expressions or ideas. Effects depend on context; repetition does not always express the same emotion.
Epic hexameter is quantitative metre, not simply six ordinary spoken stresses or a count of words. Distinguish syllable length, metrical position and word accent, and justify a scansion rather than inventing it. Dialect and poetic conventions matter. A sound commentary connects wording, structure, genre and context, then qualifies what the excerpt cannot establish. Current prescribed authors and passages vary and need separate verification; this foundation does not certify an official regional text list.